The Waste Land

This is the first 1,000 characters of 1284 words (5.14 pages) in the essay titled The Waste Land

The Waste Land

Ceremonies in "The Waste Land"

Ceremonies are prevalent throughout T.S. Eliot's poem "The
Waste Land". Eliot relies on literary contrasts to illustrate the
specific values of meaningful, effectual rituals of primitive society
in contrast to the meaningless, broken, sham rituals of the modern
day. These contrasts serve to show how ceremonies can become broken
when they are missing vital components, or they are overloaded with
too many. Even the way language is used in the poem furthers the
point of ceremonies, both broken and not. In section V of The Waste
Land, Eliot writes,

"After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead" (ll. 322-328).

The imagery of a primal ceremony is evident in this passage. The la...

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